Archaeology: Discovery of Native Artifacts, Relics of
Early Settlement
Keough Effigy Land & Water Reserve contains a large portion of the Reynick Mound Group, initially surveyed in the 1890's by William Baker Nickerson, pioneer archaeologist and employee of the Great Northern Railroad Company.
The railroad company saved his maps, which have now been interpreted and permanently preserved by the University of Illinois.
Nickerson described the Reynick Mound Group as consisting of three sub-groups — two on the cliff summits overlooking the Mississippi River and floodplain, the third at a lower elevation below one of the subgroups above. This lower group contains the bear effigy mound.
Native Americans constructed these burial mounds during the Late Woodland Period of 700 to 1000 AD. The effigy mound building culture then encompassed communities in what is now Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
Many remaining effigies have shapes which resemble birds, bear, deer, serpent, or spirit animals and people. Other mounds, often found in association with effigy mounds, are abstract and resemble long linear embankments and conical mounds.
A few hundred mounds were constructed in Jo Daviess County during the Late Woodland period. Of these, only two sites remain intact. JDCF preserves the mounds at Keough Effigy Mounds Land & Water Reserve, as well as the mounds at Casper Bluff Land & Water Reserve.
In addition to linear, conical, and effigy mounds, Keough Effigy Mounds Land & Water Reserve contains features indicating the presence of early human habitation: bluff base rock shelters and shell middens (a mound or deposit containing mollusk shells and other food remnants).